Morning's Consequences
by aehawthorne
Summary: The morning after what happened with the Count- and everything after it- Felicity and Oliver must have the difficult conversation about how things stand between them now. The conclusion of the three part arc that began in Stay with Me


When Felicity awoke in the morning, Oliver was gone, though the sheets were rumpled where he'd been lying, reminding her that she'd fallen asleep in his arms. A groan escaped her as she rolled over onto her back to stare at the ceiling. She dreaded the conversation she knew they would have to have about the way things stood between them now. After last night, they'd be fools to try and act like it hadn't changed. But she knew Oliver well enough to know that he was going to try to do exactly that, try and pretend that everything was normal and that what was between was still strictly platonic despite the way that everything that had happened last night, both with the Count and after, called that into question, and Felicity knew, somehow, that that would hurt her more than anything he might say during the actual conversation.

Realizing that she couldn't prolong the inevitable any longer, Felicity swung herself upright and out of bed, then padded cautiously out of her bedroom, not bothering to change out of her pajamas.

"I took the day off," Oliver said, without preamble or apparent reason when she entered the kitchen, where he was standing at the counter across from the sink, staring pensively into a cup of steaming black coffee. "Isabelle wasn't very happy about it, but I told her that I need to be with my family today. She couldn't exactly say no."

"So why are you here?" Felicity asked, moving across the kitchen to get herself a cup of coffee. She found herself dreading what the answer would be.

"Because I lied," Oliver said bluntly. "My family doesn't need me right now. You do."

"What I need is for us to be honest with each other," Felicity declared with a confidence she did not truly feel, turning to face Oliver, cup of coffee now in hand.

"What are you talking about?" Oliver asked. He'd never been any good at lying to her, but this time his attempt at deception, at feigned ignorance, fell especially short.

"You know what I'm talking about," Felicity replied in the same blunt tone Oliver had used earlier. When he stared at her blankly, apparently intent on continuing the charade, she said, "We obviously can't keep pretending that we're just friends. Not after what happened last night.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Oliver insisted, and Felicity wanted to scream with frustration. Putting herself out there like this was hard enough as it was without him refusing to even so much as meet her halfway.

"We _are_ just friends," Oliver went on, distracting her from her thoughts. "Nothing that happened between us last night was anything but platonic."

"Oliver, you killed for me," Felicity said, wincing even as the words left her mouth, hating how it felt like she was throwing it in his face, but she knew him. He needed to see all the facts laid out in front of him before he would or even could accept something as true.

"I would have done the same for any of my friends," Oliver countered. "I would have done it for Dig." Felicity shook her head, not because she didn't believe that that was true, but because she knew there was more to it than that.

"You came here last night," she pointed out. "When I didn't ask you to."

"Because I thought you wouldn't want to be alone," Oliver replied. "After everything that had just happened."

"You slept in my bed with me last night."

"Because you asked me to stay-"

"Oliver!" His name came out as a shout, cutting short his protests, his justifications, his excuses. Felicity blinked, just as surprised by her sudden outburst as Oliver was. Her voice dropping to a near whisper, she added, "You… you kissed me." At the reminder, images from that moment sprang to the forefront of her mind- Oliver's lips on hers, his fingers tangled in her hair, his caresses wiping away the memory of the Count's touch, little by little.

"Yes," Oliver said, his voice jolting her out of her recollections. "I did. But I shouldn't have. We were both mostly drunk, and neither of us were in our right minds. I took advantage of you, Felicity, and I've been regretting it every second since."

"People don't kiss people they don't care about," Felicity said, a declaration that would have been a lot more forceful if she could have managed to speak in anything louder than a whisper.

"Of course they do," Oliver replied. His voice turned cold and distant, so that he no longer even sounded like himself. "I do it all the time."

"No you don't," Felicity argued. "Maybe you _did_, once upon a time, but not anymore. You're not that person anymore."

"How would you know?" Oliver demanded, his blue eyes cold like chips of ice. It would have been disconcerting if Felicity hadn't known that the chill in his eyes and in his voice was nothing but an act.

"Because I know you," she said. She paused, then went on, "I don't understand why it's so hard for you to just admit that things between us have changed."

"I told you that because of the life I lead, it's better for me to not be with someone that I could really care about," Oliver said. It wasn't really an answer, and Felicity didn't know how he could think she could have possibly forgotten that, since it had only happened a week ago. Still, she nodded.

"You must have realized that I was talking about you," Oliver said fervently, his voice shifting from cold to heat. "I… care about you, Felicity, and that's exactly why I can't be with you. The risk that you'd be used by my enemies to get to me is too great. Look what happened with the Count- he found out about the connection between us, and then he almost killed you."

"But he didn't," Felicity replied, hating, for the third time in less than twelve hours, how desperate she sounded. "You stopped him."

"And there's no guarantee that I'll be able to stop the next person who tries," Oliver said. "I can't bear the thought of you being hurt or killed because of me." Felicity closed her eyes against the crushing pain of rejection that rose up to overwhelm her. She heard Oliver cross the kitchen, and then she felt him take her hands in his. Her eyes snapped open, and she saw that he was studying her face with eyes shadowed with pain and guilt.

"I'm sorry, Felicity," he said softly. "I don't want to hurt you."

"Then stop doing… _this_," Felicity replied, pulling her hands out of his grip. "Either accept your feelings or deny them, but don't keep switching back and forth between the two. Don't string me along like that." Oliver took a step back, but didn't back away from her all the way the way she'd hoped he would. It was hard for her to think when he was this close to her, hard for her to string her words together into a coherent sentence and say what she knew needed to be said. Finally though, she gathered her resolve and managed to get the words out. "I think you should call Isabelle and tell her that you're coming in after all. Tell her that your mom insisted that you work today."

"Felicity-" Oliver began.

"Please, just go," Felicity in a rush, cutting him off. "If you're going to pretend like everything is still totally normal, we're both going to have to start acting like it. I'll see you at QC in a little bit." She closed her eyes again, this time to fight back tears, and when she opened them, Oliver was gone.


End file.
